Abstract: A manner of mitigating the self heating effect of a laser or other light source such as a laser in a network node of a communication network. A self-heating mitigation module is provided, the self-heating mitigation module includes one or both of a self-heating adjustment module to accelerate self heating at the beginning of a transmission and a sub-threshold lasing module that applies a sub-threshold current between transmissions. The self-heating adjustment module and the sub-threshold lasing module are preferable both used together and driven by a common signal, for example the burst_enable signal that facilitates transmission from the light source.